Irregular Times Diaries: Unfit Discussion

Last night, I went with my dad to rent some films from the local 7-11 and when we were checking them out, this guy came in and asked to use the bathroom, but the clerk told him the bathroom shuts down at 8:30pm. This confused both my dad and myself, but while I was content to shrug my shoulders and chalk it upto stupidity, he had to ask the obvious.

“Why 8:30?” he asked. He sounded incredulous but otherwise polite, but he cashier got huffy in her reply of “It’s for my safety.”

Now, when someone starts talking like a smartass in the way she did, he’s gonna feel the need to make them sound like an idiot. So he said, “Why? You afraid the toilet’s gonna overflow?”

With that remark, I could literally see her puff up with righteous indignation and she threw out a retort that you could tell was one she thought was the one that would shut him up. And she also said it louder than was necessary; “No, I’m afraid someone will come out here and kill me!”

To which my dad’s reply was; “Oh that start that at 8:30, huh?”

After that, she clamed up and didn’t say anything else and I couldn’t hide my laughter.

But reflecting on that, I started thinking about other retarded “security measures.” See, if someone was gonna kill her, they’d do it when coming through the front door, not when coming out of the can. And besides, if someone was gonna kill her, why would a locked bathroom stop him, unless his weapon of choice is a plunger and a roll of T.P.

When I was going to middle school after the Columbine shootings, they started putting up metal detectors and searching the kids as they came into the school but there were more holes in their security than a block of swiss cheese.

They had barred off all the entrances except the ones closest to the parking lot in order to funnel the to the metal detectors. But the doors they were using opened up to a set of secondary stairways.

First off, if you wanted to avoid the metal detectors all together, all you had to do was, after you came up the first set of stairs to the main floor, just turn left and go right up to the second floor where there were no metal detectors! Both my locker and my first class were on the second floor, but at least a third of the kids would go up this stairway, walk down the hall, then go down the main stairway and to their class, all with never being searched.

Another flaw with their security was that when looking through a kid’s backpack, it’d largely be just a token glance and they wouldn’t even open their binders (which can easily hide a large pistol and a good amount of ammunition).

And another, most glaring flaw, was that once the bell rang they would start putting up the walk-through scanners, whether or not there were still kids who haven’t been searched. Like they think any kid who’s going homicidal and is gonna start blowing hell out of their school is gonna make a real effort to be on time.

So let’s see, even with all this money spent on security for schools, how hard would it be to go on a shooting spree?

Show up ten or fifteen minutes late with your shotgun and handguns, stick them in your locker, and wait until lunch. When they let out, go to your locker and you’ll be on the six o’clock news.

I’ve seen this type of security in practice with the government, as well as the local gas stations and middle schools and I can’t help but wonder why we’re spending so much money on security measures that don’t work. We could take about half or two thirds of the security funding and give every school in America brand new textbooks and computers as well as keeping up the wonderful level of security that we currently have.

~ Damen